Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One and Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Bertram is also the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, Daughter Am I, More Deaths Than One, and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

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Can you believe it? This is the thirtieth day of my Daughter Am I blog tour! Only five days left. Oh, dear . . . what am I going to do with all that free time? As if I don’t know.

For one thing, I’m going to get back to writing. I figure if I tell myself this enough, it will sink in and I will actually do it. I keep hoping I’ll stumble on a new idea to give me a renewed enthusiasm for the story, but perhaps that idea will come during the writing. I’ve been rereading what I’ve already written so I know what the story is, and it’s different, but then what’s the point of writing the same?

For another thing, I’ve decided to follow the story of A Spark of Heavenly Fire in real time on my blog. I just checked the book. The story begins on December 2. Whatever happened to December 1? That’s when the original story started. Apparently, when I condensed the first fifty pages, I decided to leave the rest of the timeline intact. The book originally began with Rachel Abram’s death on December 1, then the jogger’s death on December 2. Somehow in the rewrite, the order got reversed.

My original first line was: “There’s something terribly wrong with me,” Rachel Abrams said. “I feel great.” I always liked the idea of starting with that line, but sometimes we need to do what’s best for the story.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I have to focus on this tour — there are still articles about Daughter Am I to write, comments to respond to, and the end-of-the-tour party to plan. As if that’s not enough, my party will run concurrently with the Second Wind Publishing new release party. Daughter Am I will be in good company. JJ Dare’s new book False World has just been released, and so has One Too Many Blows to the Head by Eric Beetner and JB Kohl.

Today’s tour stops are all wonderful, and that’s due in no small part to my hosts.

Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One debunks many established beliefs about what grief is, explains how it affects those left behind, and shows how to adjust to a world that no longer contains the loved one. “It is exactly what folk need to read who are grieving.”(Leesa Heely Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator ).

Other books by Pat Bertram

Available online wherever books and ebooks are sold.

Grief: The Great Yearning is not a how-to but a how-done, a compilation of letters, blog posts, and journal entries Pat Bertram wrote while struggling to survive her first year of grief. This is an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.

While sorting through her deceased husband’s effects, Amanda is shocked to discover a gun and the photo of an unknown girl who resembles their daughter. After dedicating her life to David and his vocation as a pastor, the evidence that her devout husband kept secrets devastates Amanda. But Amanda has secrets of her own. . .

When Pat’s adult dance classmates discover she is a published author, the women suggest she write a mystery featuring the studio and its aging students. One sweet older lady laughingly volunteers to be the victim, and the others offer suggestions to jazz up the story. Pat starts writing, and then . . . the murders begin.

Thirty-seven years after being abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Colorado, Becka Johnson returns to try to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? And why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen?

When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents -- grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born -- she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead.

In quarantined Colorado, where hundreds of thousands of people are dying from an unstoppable, bio-engineered disease, investigative reporter Greg Pullman risks everything to discover the truth: Who unleashed the deadly organism? And why?

Bob Stark returns to Denver after 18 years in SE Asia to discover that the mother he buried before he left is dead again. At her new funeral, he sees . . . himself. Is his other self a hoaxer, or is something more sinister going on?